Police are investigating the gang's possible connection with similar groups in African countries including Nigeria.

Image for representation. (Image: Reuters)

Bhopal: A fake call centre involved in duping the US citizens of huge sums has been busted in Bhopal. This comes less than three weeks after a similar call centre was busted in Indore.

The police said that the members of the group posed online as US law enforcement officers and duped US loan defaulters of huge sums by threatening them with prosecution and arrest.

Seven youth, four from Madhya Pradesh and three from Gujarat, used to run the call centre from a rented premises in Bhopal.

Abhishek Pathak from Ahmedabad had paired up with Bhopal’s 29-year-old Rampal Singh, a BCA graduate, after they worked in Ahmedabad’s outbound call centre and learnt speaking fluently to US citizens. They had hired school drop-outs to carry out the fake

“By hiring four operators including school drop-outs, the two managed to dupe 3,000 to 5,000 US citizens who were loan defaulters,” DG (Cyber) Aruna Mohan Rao said.

“As the fraudsters threatened the naïve US citizens by posing as officers of federal law enforcement officers, they were trapped into sending money as loan settlement amount through bitcoins and Moneygram and at times the money was transferred to other fraudsters,” said Rao.

The members of the racket had procured the personal data of 12 lakh US citizens and used to send them e-mails and text messages. They used multiple e-mail accounts named as US agencies and internet telephony to coerce gullible US citizens to settle loan amounts and pay them huge sums, ADG (Cyber) Rajesh Gupta said.

Ahmedabad-origin Vatsal Dipeshbhai Gandhi is believed to have helped the Bhopal call centre procure personal data of 12 lakh US citizens using his overseas contacts.

The gang made their victims pay sums to their accounts of their partners in US and other countries. The Bhopal-based group would in turn received their payments in Indian currency. They received around Rs 20 lakh through scamming.

Police are investigating the gang's possible connection with similar groups in African countries including Nigeria.

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